.

Matt — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:32:54 +0000

Matt — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:15:05 +0000

Matt — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:22:28 +0000

I’ve been trying to fortify and expand my upper vocal range. the result is I’ve gained new notes at the bottom end.

Matt — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:22:07 +0000

they say that out of all instruments, drums are the most recorded and sampled, and among drums, the snare wins by a long shot.

unless you have some special interest, you’re not likely to pay a lot of attention to percussion in songs.

blah blah blah

what I really wanted to say is, now that I pay more attention to percussion I’ve really come to love the sound and role of snares. they have so much personality.

Matt — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:04:26 +0000

I used to be surprised when people who didn’t play piano said they thought piano was a hard instrument. The reason given was that there are so many notes and you have to keep track of them all. (I later discovered piano is indeed very difficult but for other reasons) I didn’t understand what they meant until I tried to follow orchestral scores years later.

After not reading much music for awhile I also found that I couldn’t sight read very well anymore. (I used to be quite good)
I had problems just following music, couldn’t even count! When you spend a long time listening to music but not reading it and then you try to read it, it feels very unnatural. You also discover, if you try to sequence music with a program, that music is never played strictly to the written time anyway. (unless it’s bach, or something like that, then I guess it’s pretty close)

Matt — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 02:56:08 +0000

a curious thing happened to me. this past week I have been listening to Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto. a couple nights ago I was lying in bed playing a song I have been working on in my head, but another song was stuck in my head, as is usual. it was the finale from the concerto.

so here I was playing my song in my head with the finale also playing at the same time, and it sounded very exciting. I decided to overlay the finale at the end of my song, which is a rather strange device I now came across by chance.

my song is in g minor. curiously, the finale of Tchaikovsky’s concerto is in the relative major, b flat.

Matt — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:47:13 +0000

Matt — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:56:17 +0000

For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness.

Matt — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:54:43 +0000

There’s an economists’ riddle that goes “Why are the debates in academia so bitter?” – the answer – “Because the stakes are so low.”
Now, very often, that’s true.
I remember a presentation that Paul Krugman gave at Stanford where he was talking about a model of economic development. Paul drew a diagram on the board, and as he described it, he drew a few little arrows indicating migration of businesses from one area to another. A respected economic theorist at Stanford, Mordecai Kurz (who never drew an arrow without a differential equation), immediately jumped up and shouted “You haven’t described the dynamics!!” to which Paul responded that he was indicating a general movement of economic activity toward one place to improve efficiency. Dr. Kurz pounded the table and screamed “Then erase the arrows!! ERASE THE ARROWS!!” and then stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
I think that was probably the exact moment that I decided to go into finance.

Matt — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:38:20 +0000

I caught a student’s plagiarism by running the first sentence of his paper through Google. Up popped the original from a library system at another college. Called student in to tell him he’d been caught cheating and would be receiving a failing grade. He looked stunned. Then embarrassed. “No, I didn’t write the paper,” he said. “My father did it for me.”